Storms Cool Flames but One Kills a Firefighter : Victim of Lightning Is Second to Die as Western Lands Burn

A firefighter in Arizona became the second fatality of the season as more than 20 major wildfires continued to burn out of control across the West on Tuesday.

Ironically, Ernie Cachine, who was killed while battling a 200-acre timber fire in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, northeast of Phoenix, died when he was struck by lightning from one of the thunderstorms that were helping to quench blazes in the area, officials said.

Scattered rainfall and rising humidity were helping firefighters make headway against fires in northeastern California, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska and Oregon.

On the other hand, gusting winds and rugged terrain were hampering the efforts of those battling fires in a state park at Big Sur, in the mountainous back country of San Diego County and in the Boulder Canyon area west of Denver.

“The worst two states probably are Colorado and California,” Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan said in a television interview. “The others, the weather seems to be helping us a little bit. . . . We have to depend on Mother Nature.”

Cachine’s death was reported as controversy arose concerning the first fatality, which occurred in Big Sur.

A convict said Tuesday that “busywork” was to blame for the accident Sunday night that killed one man and injured six others as they battled the blaze in central California.

Randy Hubbard, 34, a convict whose right arm was broken in the accident, said that he and other members of a California Department of Corrections crew had been taking a break when they were ordered to cut a useless firebreak to impress a state forestry official visiting the site.

He told reporters from his hospital bed in Salinas that a crew chief ordered the team to “go up there and look busy.”

Hubbard, a Fresno resident who has been serving time for robbery at the Galiban Conservation Camp near Soledad, said the crew members began cutting a break in a steep ravine flanked by flames when they heard the big fire-weakened redwood snap.

“When the tree hit the ground, it exploded like a cannon firing,” Hubbard said. “After it hit, it rolled over on us.”

A Losing Gamble

The falling tree that injured Hubbard and five others killed Antonio S. Hernandez, 26, a father of four from San Diego who was serving time for a narcotics-possession conviction.

Eric Buckner, 30, another prisoner injured in the incident, said only that the crew “took a gamble and lost.”

Karen Terrell, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Forestry, discounted the suggestion that firefighters were endangered needlessly and said she hoped it was all “a misunderstanding.

“All I can say is that the inmates are a very valuable part of the CDF firefighting force,” she said. “We wouldn’t be the department we are without them. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would endanger their lives.”

Officials said the accident was under investigation.

Meanwhile, arson investigators and police were looking for clues as to who set off the time-delay incendiary device believed to have started the fire that, by Tuesday night, had charred more than 3,000 acres in the recreational lands in and around Andrew Molera State Park.

A Homicide Case

Arsonists using such devices have set more than 60 fires in the Monterey County area in recent years, investigators said. Police said anyone arrested in the current Big Sur fire could be prosecuted on homicide charges because of Hernandez’s death.

Firefighters at the Big Sur blaze were having a tough time of it Tuesday as the flames, pushed by sea breezes, moved eastward from the relatively damp forest along the coast into the drier mountains farther inland.

The steep inland terrain is covered with chaparral, oaks and stands of evergreens that were providing ample fuel for the fire.

Fire roads are scarce in the area, and officials said they were forced to rely heavily on air drops of fire retardants from helicopters and tanker planes and on the “hand-to-hand combat” of camp crews who made their way to the hot spots on foot.

To the south, in San Diego County, onshore breezes were pushing a wildfire in the Mt. Laguna area into increasingly desolate terrain in the Cleveland National Forest, causing problems for the more than 1,100 firefighters attempting to encircle the 4,700-acre blaze.

Fire officials said the Mt. Laguna fire, only about 30% contained on Tuesday, could continue to burn for several more days.

Danger Is Still High

“We’ve got a long spell ahead of us here,” said California Department of Forestry Fire Chief Barrit Neal. “We’re making headway, but it can kick up at any time.”

In Colorado, several hundred residents of the Sugarloaf Mountain area west of Denver, allowed to return to their homes Monday night, were evacuated again Tuesday as winds began pushing the flames back toward Boulder Canyon.

Officials said the fire, apparently started by burning trash as 100-degree temperatures baked the area on Sunday, had destroyed 65 homes and was threatening dozens more.

Another Colorado blaze, in Mesa Verde National Park, was growing slowly Tuesday night after scorching more than 2,500 acres. Archeologists said none of the ancient Indian cliff dwellings in the park were threatened.

In other areas of the West, especially those where the weather was getting cooler and moister, firefighters were beginning to get the upper hand.

In northeastern California, where winds abated, temperatures eased and a few light sprinkles were forecast for some mountain areas, the state Department of Forestry reported containment of two fires that had burned over more than 9,000 acres since Saturday in Plumas and Lassen counties.

In Nebraska, where temperatures were dropping a bit despite a continuing lack of rainfall, fire officials said they were gradually achieving containment of the fire that started Saturday at Fort Robinson State Park.

Estimates of the area burned in the Nebraska fire were enlarged to 100,000 acres--40,000 more than on Monday--but officials said the increase was primarily because of a more accurate survey, rather than to any major spread of the flames.

Disaster Response Team coordinator Larry Nedrow said bombers dropping fire retardant were proving effective against the blaze. He said that without them, “we’d been looking at weeks” before the fire is brought under control.

In Arizona, where the thunderstorms struck Monday night, fire officials were optimistic that they would soon contain most of the blazes that had burned more than 63,000 acres since last week.

“The rains really helped us out,” said Bill Speight, a national forest supervisor in the southeastern part of the state.

In Utah, a 1,000-acre brush fire briefly threatened 345,000-volt transmission lines that relay electrical power to much of the West, but firefighters surrounded the blaze and officials reported the containment of four other fires that had blackened more than 27,000 acres of brushland.

Firefighters said they were nearing control of a 3,500-acre blaze in Wyoming. Two fires in Oregon were confined to a total of about 2,000 acres.